Tarrex ch’Rihan Dor
Sitting on a beach on the planet Risa, watching the sunset, Tarrex contemplated the holo sitting on his lap. The last time he was home after his father’s death, his little sister, no not so little anymore, a young woman now, threw the holo at his head just barely missing him. He knew his younger brother was lurking somewhere in the shadows, watching silently. Narissa screeched at him “How dare you come here to our home, after you threw everything, Father gave us in his face the last you were here!”
Tarrex chuckled at the remark, everything he had given, that was a joke. Father had brought them to the “Artifact” to live after the home world was destroyed. They were expected to join the Zhat Vash, as Father was a General in it’s ranks. “If you mean me rejecting the Zhat Vash, and Tal Shiar?, then yes I walked away from it all”, “Do you agree with her little brother?", “I know you are there Narek, come out of the shadows and speak boy!” A young man stepped forward, out of the shadows, and glanced at Narissa, swallowing hard, as if he were afraid to cross her. Averting his attention from his brother and playing with a puzzle box in his hand, he responded “You deserted us, you promised to return for us, but you didn’t! We did fine on our own!” Slumping into a chair partially in the shadow’s, “We don’t need you.” Running his hands through his hair, Tarrex sighed heavily. “I’m here now, I was making a life for us on Virinat. A real home! Not some derelict Borg cube!”
Narissa slammed her hand down on the table, “Enough! You expect us to be farmers! Have you gone as insane as Auntie Ramdha!” Turning toward his sister Tarrex responded, “Don’t let your anger, and bitterness consume you as it did our older brother Nero”, looking at Narek, he saw him wince. The it pained him almost as much as it did Tarrex at the loss of Nero. Now shaking with anger Narissa shouted, “How dare you!” picking up the holo, and walking slowly and purposefully toward Tarrex, she slapped the holo into his hands. “Take that and go! Now! You are not wanted here!”
Slumping in defeat, Tarrex walked slowly to the shuttle bay, with the memory of Nareks pained look as he left their quarters on the Artifact. He somehow knew he would never return here.
Coming out of his musings when a native bird landed on his beach chair, Tarrex picked up the holo, and switched it on. With a faint glow in the dying light, an image of his deceased father flickered to life. His fathers image began to speak “My children are or were my greatest success and yet my greatest weakness. Nero, so brilliant yet stubborn, he let his grief consume him, and what did it get him, nothing but death. My daughter Narissa, so angry, I fear she may follow in Nero’s footsteps. She is so headstrong and will only listen to her aunt. Narek, lost in his own world. Always trying to solve puzzles and doing his sisters bidding. She is such a bad influence on him, and nothing I do matters. Then there is Tarrex, Strong-willed, so much like me, yet so different. He marches to his own tune. Of all four of my children, he is the one I am most proud of. Strong enough to stand on his own and make his own way. If only we had not left things the way they were, if I could have only reached out to him, and tell him.”
Switching off the holo, Tarrex swallowed back the tears, His family broken, he tried, but could not fix it. Now his father dead at the hands of Hakeev, Nero dead consumed by grief and hatred. Narissa also dead due to her hatred, and Narek, in a Starfleet prison, and even his contacts couldn’t get him in to see him. Tarrex stared out at the darkened horizon, and whispered to no one but the wind “Father I tried”